


And If You Close Your Eyes

by fadingstrainsofharmony



Series: Pompeii [1]
Category: Infinity Blade, Infinity Blade 2
Genre: Angst, Angst Like You Wouldn't Believe, Dark, F/M, Mild Gore, So much angst, and that's awesome, if you know what i mean, implied sex, repetitive major character death, so I seem to have written the first Infinity Blade fanfic on ao3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 19:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2593766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadingstrainsofharmony/pseuds/fadingstrainsofharmony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study of Siris through Infinity Blade 2, because all that dying and coming back to life can't have left him all sparkles and unicorns. He's messed up inside, and nobody can fix that, even if they try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And If You Close Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. First Infinity Blade fanfic on AO3, apparently. This was inspired by the fact that in Infinity Blade 2, rebirths are spaced anytime from six months to six years apart. So I wrote something about what I thought about that. Warning: heavily deviates from the happier version of Siris found in the novellas. Spoilers for Infinity Blade 1 and 2.
> 
> Title inspired by Bastille's Pompeii.

He remembers dying. Over and over again, as vivid as if it was mere moments ago. But it had been six months since he last woke up in that room of stainless steel and stainless pipes, and he's back where he started, on that blasted cliff, armored up and ready to try his hand at freeing the Worker again.

The Worker. It always came back to him, didn't it. Siris had ample time to consider the word that the Raidriar and the Titan at the top of the tower had snarled at him - Ausar. Something about it had rang familiar, and the names Worker of Secrets and Vault of Tears seemed to be more familiar than they should have. But he had brushed those thoughts away in the face of single-minded determination to free the answer to his past.

Right on cue, something lumbers into view around the outcropping of rock - a massive creature, all muscles and thick scaly skin, and he readies his sword to fight.

Just like he had so many times before.

* * *

Less than an hour later, he wakes with a jolt on the metal slab, hand pressed to his bare chest, panting heavily, the memory of dying still fresh in his mind. He'd bitten off more than he could chew with one monster, a giant bird creature lying in its nest. Unconsciously, his hand traces the marks that the creature should have killed him with - talons raking across his chest, snapping his ribs like twigs and tearing out his lungs, leaving him gasping for air for a few milliseconds before finally collapsing into blissful darkness.

That night, as he stumbles out of the rebirth chamber and towards the nearby town where he always stays until he's fit to travel to Saranthia again, he dreams.

Mainly, of course, of death.

He shoots up with a start in the middle of the night, clothes soaked with sweat, and panting as he frantically scrambles to fumble at his chest. "I'm alive," he mutters, "I'm alive." But it felt so real - a blade sliding through his ribs, stomach sliced clean open by jagged claws, jolts of blood-red electricity arcing up his spine, getting torn apart.

Somebody knocks on the door - the one-eyed innkeeper, who never seems to realize that the same man keeps appearing in his inn. "You all right in there?" he yells.

"Yes, fine, sorry to wake you," Siris calls back, and there's a grunt before the footsteps recede. He lets out the breath he didn't know he's been holding, because his fear that people will discover that he is a Deathless and believe him to be one of their vicious ranks still terrifies him.

That time, it takes three years before the nightmares stop long enough for him to travel to Saranthia again.

* * *

When he wakes up again, it isn't a monster that has sent him back to this chamber.

He was cornered, injured, and a complete idiot for trying to free those creatures in the Deathless' jail. It had been simple enough to defeat the warden and release a prisoner, until it turned on him and started attacking. Only after getting his left leg snapped in half, his right shoulder dislocated, and a scythe blade to the stomach was he able to run, and run he did. Well, it was more limping, really.

He had stumbled into a hallway somewhere and collapsed against the wall, panting heavily, dizzy from blood loss and shock. Mere seconds later, he heard a grating voice echo through the castle.

"Where are you, little mortal," it had crooned. "Don't you want to come out and play?"

Minutes later, the former prisoner finds a body slumped against the wall, already heavily damaged armor laying in a pile by the corpse. A sword lies embedded in its chest, and a faint trickle of blood drips down from the wound.

The next time Siris returns to the castle, he bypasses the door to the jail entirely, having seen that the Deathless warden has reimprisoned the monster he freed his last time here.

He never goes back to the prison again.

* * *

The thought crosses his mind a few times that maybe, just maybe, he should find Raidriar and his Infinity Blade and end it. It crosses his mind when he is defeated by the Archivist for the first time and left to bleed out on the stone floor.

(It's forty-six minutes before he finally realizes that laying there in agony isn't productive, and another twenty-two before he can end it himself.

He counted.)

When he finally manages to open the Archivist's seal, after ages and ages of seemingly endless fighting through that same damned castle full of enemies, it's a bit of a bummer when he has to kill himself immediately after. But the success has raised his spirits a little bit - until, of course, he fights his way through that coliseum and sees that the next seal is behind not somebody his size, but a massive beast instead.

He wakes up again with a startled gasp, having just found out what it feels like to get your skull crushed. It's not something he wants to repeat again, and he puts off that seal to try to get to the one guarded by that mechanic in the garage.

As he discovers firsthand (wholly unintentionally), just because his enemy is built and piloted by a man doesn't mean that it's any less powerful than a real enemy of flesh and blood.

He keeps that lesson in mind to avoid future grisly deaths.

But at this rate, he doesn't want to return to Saranthia. He isn't quite as motivated as he was before, and then there's that name the Archivist hissed at him - Ausar? Who was that? But the name rings warning bells in his mind, and he feels without a doubt that whoever that is, he doesn't want to know.

So he, out of bitter spite, decides not to return to the Vault of Tears. Because then what? Not like somebody can make him.

He spends the best five years of his life (lives?) working various jobs, and never picking up a sword once. He doesn't want to go back, and at this rate, he doesn't think he will.

Then one night, as he visits the local tavern, he runs into somebody he didn't expect to ever see again.

"Isa?"

That evening goes from the bar to his room, and he wakes up in the morning with a pounding skull, as expected. But what he doesn't expect is the lithe form pressed up against his chest, and it takes him a moment to fully recall the events of the night before. He weighs his choices for a moment - leave, or stay.

And even though his mind is screaming at him to leave, to run away like he's done with the Worker and the Vault of Tears and the Deathless, he chooses to stay.

He invites Isa to stay with him when she wakes up, because what kind of friend would he be if he didn't? Now that he has a house, and makes all of his ventures to Saranthia seem like short business trips, it would be rude not to.

She accepts, and Siris lets out a breath he's holding for no reason he can understand.

Later that week, as Isa helps him with his current stint as a blacksmith, gripping the newly-forged items with tongs and submerging them into a vat of freezing water, she brings up the topic that he's been trying so hard to avoid.

"How's freeing the Worker going?" she asks, seemingly innocuously, and Siris stiffens. He hesitates just a moment before bringing the hammer down on the anvil with a resounding clang. The plate he's forging shatters into pieces, and he snarls angrily at it before tossing the pieces onto the grate suspended over the fire to heat again.

Isa catches the slip, though, and looks at him sympathetically before turning back to her task, purposefully diverting her attention elsewhere. Siris drops the hammer with a soft thunk onto a wooden table nearby and grips the edges of the anvil with both hands, breathing through his teeth as vivid recollections of teeth and claws and sword flash through his mind. The not-quite-burning-but-close-enough metal sears at his palms, but he doesn't even notice, too caught up in his own mind.

"Siris?"

He hasn't had a flashback or nightmare for half a year now, so why now? It's not like he hasn't thought about it. He has, it's just -

"Siris."

Maybe it's Isa. Her showing up is the only physical reminder of his mission, other than the armor and swords and weapons in his attic that he sends a young up-and-coming warrior to fetch back from the castle after every Rebirth, and he never looks at those -

"Siris!"

He jerks out of his thoughts, mumbles an apology, and quickly pulls his hands off the anvil. His palms are a burnt and an ugly red now, and Isa looks at him questioningly. He says nothing.

"Siris, why don't you head back?" she suggests softly, calmly. "I can finish up here." He nods numbly and rushes out the door. His house is connected to the forge - it's easier for him that way. Stumbling into the small kitchen, he stares sightlessly at his hands. The bright burns are starting to throb now, and even though he knows for a fact that it's from the anvil, he still remembers monsters with fire burning beneath their skin, scalding his hands on the hot metal of his sword after sitting too long in the sun, campfires roaring and a castle looming in the distance.

He's running, he knows that, trying to run away from a future he knows that he can't get away from but tries to anyway.

*  *  *

Days later, the incident forgotten, Isa and Siris walk out into the town, just to find a child crying in the streets. Siris stops, bends down, asks, "What's wrong?"

"Daddy left on a trip," she sniffles. "He said he'd be back two days ago."

The two of them ride out into the forest that day, searching the path from that village to the girl's father's destination, and it's not long before they find him - or what's left of him. He wandered a bit too close to the hunting grounds of a Deathless, it seems, and paid for it in blood. Very little of said blood seems to still be in his body, and even Siris cringes a little at the mess the monsters have left.

They bury what's left of him where he died, and only take his possessions - clothes not included, as those have been mostly shredded as well - back to the village. As soon as they knock on the door, a woman answers. She takes one look at the bloodstained bags they hold in gloved hands, the sympathetic looks on their faces, and bursts into tears. The girl runs out, curious to see what the commotion is, and the newly-widowed mother ushers her back inside even as she cries.

The next morning, Isa wakes up to a bed that's strangely cold. A note lies by the bedside on a tray along with breakfast, reading only, "Left to try again. Sorry. Stay as long as you want; I'll be back within the year." The trip to Saranthia is long, Isa knows, and difficult. So she packs up and leaves that very day, deciding she has places to go, and people to help. She can't do what Siris can, with his apparent immortality, but she can try.

As she leaves, she sees a rather familiar cart in front of the widow's house, with the contents covered by a rough blanket. Curiosity getting the better of her, she walks over to get a closer look. A note, written in very familiar handwriting, announces that the cart is for the widow and her daughter, and a quick peek shows sacks of gold and supplies inside. All of it is enough, at the very least, to support them until Siris returns.

She smiles, and leaves.

*  *  *

The Worker. He's done it, he's in the Vault, and Siris feels a giddy rush of exhilaration at finally achieving his goal. Those months spent with Isa seem so long ago now, but they had given him enough rest to throw himself back into his quest with a passion, and he's finally done what he came here to do. It's a bit discouraging, of course, that he has to fight Raidriar. But he knows he only has one chance, and he storms straight to Saydhi's palace and slams the bell with his weapon, screams out his worst enemy's name, and plants the cold metal onto the hard stone before he stands there and waits.

(He sits down, of course, at some point, and eats, because it takes Raidriar quite a while to heed his call. But it's slightly more dramatic to make it seem as if he'd been standing there, waiting, the whole time.)

Raidriar laughs; sends his weakling minions to fight it out with Siris first. They barely faze him, and he takes them down without so much as breaking a sweat. (That's a lie - the armor is hot and stuffy, but the gist of it is the same.) And then he's facing Raidriar again, and the last time this happened, he was shot in the head. But he grits his teeth and tightens his grip on the sword and fights Raidriar for all he's worth, and is actually somewhat surprised when he wins and knocks the God King out. He'd expected somewhat more aplomb, but he can't have everything.

Lugging the great armored oaf back to Saranthia is even more trouble than he's worth. Thank god Siris had some knockout potion he'd purchased from a shady-looking healer, but they kept Raidriar out and didn't kill him, so he supposed that they were relatively safe. But he had to drag the other Deathless's unconscious body through heat and snow, slogging through the wilderness one heavy step at a time, and he was more than glad when he finally got into the castle and dropped Raidriar like he was a heavy stone. The drugs would be wearing off by now, and he had just run out, so he was immensely thankful he had just gotten back.

But something was wrong. The Worker was going off about Ausar now, and - that  _bastard_.

He really should've listened to those titans instead of brashly charging in as he did.

But Raidriar was stirring, and Siris did his best to scavenge for a weapon. He had nothing. But he stripped Raidriar of his armor, piece by piece, and left the helmet for last. Just as he reached to take that off too, he felt something seize his hand in a grip of solid steel.

"Well, hello there, Ausar," the voice hissed, and Siris felt ice crawling up his spine, unable to stop the sudden shudder that passed through him in response to the chill. He wouldn't show it, but he was terrified - half of his nightmares were of dying by this man's hand, because he remembered when he was the Sacrifice and died so many times, killed by the God King. But he was exhausted from his near-nonstop trek back, with brief rests taken only when he was about to pass out from hunger or thirst or fatigue, so he was unable to do anything when he was flung at the opposite wall. His back collided with it, ribs snapping like twigs, blood dripping down beneath his armor as they pierced the skin.

"Stuck in here together, are we?" The voice was moving closer through the pervading darkness, and Siris scrambled to get up, or grab a weapon, blinking with his eyes still adjusting to the dark. He hissed as a booted foot pressed down insistently on his hand, and went completely still, hoping that Raidriar wouldn't do anything.

No such luck. The foot crunched down, and Siris bit back a howl as bones cracked. He really shouldn't have taken off those armored gloves when removing his enemy's armor.

"Well." A foot caught him in the skull, and he was thrown to the side a bit, winded. When his thoughts cleared again, he was aware only of his armor getting stripped off too, likely for the same reason he had done so to Raidriar - to get rid of the protection that it provided. But Raidriar seemed to be removing his own and putting it on himself, which was bad. Siri made a feeble attempt to get away, only to be caught by an armored foot this time in the stomach. He curled into himself, gasping for air.

"We." An armored hand grasped him by the throat - Raidriar's, as he had never gotten around to removing those. "Are." He was hoisted up, and he weakly scrabbled at the arm, trying to pry the unmoving fingers from his throat. "Going." Raidriar slammed him into the ground again as Siris choked for air, scrambling to get away. But Raidriar planted his foot on Siris's leg, which cracked audibly, and the other Deathless only laughed. "To have." The hand was back around his throat again, pressing him against the wall, slamming just hard enough to make him dizzy but not knock him out - or worse. "So. Much. Fun!" And with that, he was lifted into the air by the hand around his neck, unable to breathe, until his skull was smashed into the hard stone wall with an impact hard enough to kill. And kill it did - Siris was only aware of a few moments of searing pain before everything went black.

Except it didn't.

He was still alive.


End file.
